


Dulce

by ossapher



Series: The Macaroniverse -- Lams Modern AU [17]
Category: American Revolution RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff, M/M, Spooning, allusions to previous angst but no actual angst, just two people supporting each other, sappy tattoos, the fluffiest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 17:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8855005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ossapher/pseuds/ossapher
Summary: John and Alex order in, have a civilized debate that is only a little tense, and generally cherish one another's company.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to ciceroprofacto and john-laurens over on tumblr for the Latin translation, CherryPoison1889 for the encouragement, and herowndeliverance for the coaching :)

“Well,” says Alex, first thing when he gets home, “Let’s see it, then.”

John had half-planned to be coy, maybe even pretend he doesn’t know what Alex is talking about, but the new tattoo actually looks really good, reddened skin aside, and his eagerness to show it off overcomes any temptation to tease. He grabs his shirt behind his head and yanks it off, the now-familiar grinding ache in his shoulder accompanied by the new sting of his raw, much-punctured skin.

“She didn’t want to put it, like, _on_ the scar,” John says, “but I think she did a really good job, you know, incorporating it in the design.” Alex raises a hand to trace the words, feather-light, his fingers following the hollow curve under John’s collarbone, and John shivers a little at the frission of it, the pain that doesn’t quite hurt.

Alex leaves one hand light on John’s shoulder and places the other on John’s opposite hip. He steers him with gentle pressure, and John turns, leaning back a little until the light falls on him to Alex’s liking. Alex hums, and John waits, the anticipation building, pleasant butterflies in his stomach to hear his reaction. “It’s… I don’t know shit about art, John, but it’s… it’s a part of you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” John says, delighted that Alex caught that. “Yeah, that’s a big thing with her, working it into the… the natural lines, you know, that sort of thing.”

Alex peers closer. “And she did it in my handwriting!” he exclaims, his tone about an equal mix of surprise and delight. He looks up to meet John’s eyes. “You told her do it in my handwriting?”

“Well, I asked her to copy the words exactly,” John says. “I like it.” He fucking loves it, actually, but he’s not sure if that’s a weird thing to say, if Alex is thinking in permanent ink terms yet. Part of him is still waiting for Alex to come to his senses about this whole thing they’ve got going. But… however this turns out, whatever happens—these words—they’ll always be something that Alex gave him.

“ _Dulce et decōrum est prō concīvibus sacrificāre_ ,” Alex reads. _It is sweet and proper to sacrifice for your countrymen_. “She got the macrons right, too!”

“Of course she got the macrons right, she’s Maria fucking Cosway.” And maybe it’s a _little_ unfair that Alex’s Latin is sharp enough that he can spell-check sentences despite having learned it, as near as John can tell, in two semesters of college for shits and giggles. But witnessing such ridiculous feats is one of the hazards of living with Alex. “And, Alex, I have _no_ idea how you got the discount you did and frankly I’m not sure I want to know—that actress from _Orange is the New Black_ was behind me in line and I’m _pretty_ sure I recognized the guy in front of me from the U.S. men’s national soccer team—”

“She’s dating Angelica, I told her some nice stories about you when they came in from New York, she was interested,” Alex says, waving his hand, still scrutinizing the tattoo. “Did she ask you what it meant?”

John snorts. “Actually, would you believe she’s fluent in twelve languages, Latin included?”

“Huh. My first reaction was _no way_ , but really anyone that Angelica’s dating would have to be a genius just to keep up.”

John grins mischievously, shrugging his shirt back on. “You were dating Angelica for a while, yeah?”

“John. No. We are not having the genius discussion again.”

“But you _were_ _—_ ”

John expects a half-exasperated eyeroll or a gentle shove, but Alex’s eyes blaze, and he starts spilling words so fast John can barely process them. “It’s just that there’s so many things that it could imply! It’s one of the highest forms of praise our society can offer and it’s fucking meaningless!” He’s standing square on, his chin raised defiantly. It’s pretty clear that he needs a fight, anyway, that he’s had an angry rant on this topic simmering for a while and needs to give it shape and get it out in the world before it festers and ruins his mood, or explodes out at some random civilian who doesn’t realize that this is just how Alex _is_. He just gets ideas and he gets really mad about them and sometimes he’s just gotta fight somebody. It’s not personal.

So John baits him. “Well, which is it? Does it mean too many things or nothing at all?”

“The one implies the other, doesn’t it? Let me take you through a couple examples.”

John nearly laughs at the signposting—speech and debate, hello—and feels a sudden rush of affection for the furiously brilliant and brilliantly furious man in front of him. “Go ahead, then.”

“One,” says Alex, and the disorganized patter of his initial flood of indignation is replaced by a forceful but steady cadence, what John thinks of as his courtroom voice. John could listen to him talk all day, which is a good thing, because Alex talks aloud while he’s writing papers and John frequently has to. “People use the word _genius_ to describe people who are demonstrably brilliant, absolutely at the pinnacle of their fields. They say, _Lebron James is a genius_ or _Maria Cosway is a genius_ and they mean, _he’s one of the best in the world at basketball_ or _she’s one of the best in the world at tattoos_ , right?”

“Sure. And you wouldn’t have a problem with it being used that way?”

Alex considers the question. “As long as it’s used sparingly, no.” He pauses a moment to make sure John has no more interruptions, before continuing. “Two, people use _genius_ to mean someone who has made or done or discovered something incredible. Something people experience and it changes their lives, or something fundamental about how we understand the world. Michaelangelo’s David, or Harper Lee’s _To Kill a Mockingbird_ , or McClintock’s jumping genes. You make a work of genius, you get to be a genius.”

“Makes sense.”

“Three,” Alex continues, “people use it to mean _unusually intelligent person as measured by imperialistic Western able-bodied neurotypical white male-biased quote-unquote intelligence tests that are a terrible metric for the skills most people actually need to live_.”

“Ah.”

“You see my problem, here. Yuppie parents can say _Our little Cayden’s a certified genius_ even if little Cayden is seven years old and still thinks hitting people is fun and has never done a genuinely useful thing in his life!”

John winces, because yikes, people called him a genius after they saw his SAT scores and he has a feeling Alex would have the same opinion of those as he does about IQ testing. Lucky for him, Alex still has more speech to get through. “And that’s not even the whole problem! When people use someone’s supposed ‘genius’ to explain their success they totally ignore the _work_ that goes into great work, like, people would _not_ be calling me a genius if I didn’t work my fucking ass off every day, except I’ll give you a pass on that one, John, because you witness the ass-working-off that happens, you know how much I fucking work and I haven’t even _done_ anything great—”

“I do,” John soothes, because Alex’s ears are turning red and that’s a sign that he’s genuinely upset. He reaches out and takes Alex’s hand. “I do know about the work you do.” He clears his throat awkwardly. “Um...all I was trying to say is that that Maria knowing so many languages means that she can proofread people’s tattoos, so, like, if you came in and you wanted Chinese for _tranquility_ or something she could tell you that you were actually about to write _dandan noodles_ or whatever.”

Alex takes a couple deep breaths and visibly calms down. “Oh, man,” he says, after a moment, “Dandan noodles sound so good right now. Can we order Chinese?”

John makes the order, giving Alex time to put his stuff away and settle back in a little. When he comes back into the living room, he’s changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants, his hair loose. Their food has just arrived, and John’s brought it in and put it on the kitchen table. It smells delicious.

But Alex is uncharacteristically quiet as they eat, chewing mechanically and staring off into the distance. He gets like this sometimes—in his head, that is—but after the first few times it happened John learned not to take offense. Eventually he finishes eating, and John reaches over to snag his takeout container when he goes to throw his own away.

“This genius thing’s really bothering you, huh?” he asks.

It’s more of a shot in the dark than it seems. Alex could just as easily be thinking about a case he learned about in lecture today, or an ad he saw on the bus, or something he overheard three weeks ago. But Alex’s shoulders slump a little, and John knows he’s right.

“It’s just…” he says haltingly. “How do you know if someone means you’re a Michelangelo or a Cayden?”

That takes John a moment to figure out, but the answer is easy enough. “I mean, check if you’ve sculpted David, I guess,” he shrugs. He walks to the kitchen, throws their trash away, returns to the living room. A second later it hits him. “Oh my God, I meant you’re a Michelangelo.”

Alex turns bright red. “I—I do _not_ think I’m Michelangelo. I think I would have noticed if I’d sculpted any Davids.”

“But you want to, don’t you?” John teases, punching Alex lightly in the arm. “Come on, man, I know you. _You_ know you’re something special.”

“ _Am_ I, though?” Alex asks. “All I’ve done so far is go to school—I haven’t even finished yet. That’s it. Thousands of people graduate law school every year.”

“And how many of them were like you, huh?” John asks. “How many of them made it because they were just… let’s see if I can get this right… _unusually intelligent people as measured by imperialistic Western able-bodied neurotypical white male-biased quote-unquote intelligence tests_? How many of them had to manage a chronic health condition and grew up in group homes and went to shitty underfunded public high schools in rural California? ”

“Exactly!” Alex cries. “That’s another—that’s exactly—look, John, I’m still not saying I’m Michelangelo, but let’s pretend I was. How would anybody fucking _know_ unless I sculpt David _right now_? Because I don’t look like a Cayden, I don’t think like a Cayden, no matter how hard I pretend to be one of them I’m never going to be one of them and—” He breaks off, eyes blazing again, and says, “We need a crisis, John. Otherwise I’m never gonna be able to prove myself, and I need to prove myself, John, I need to show people that I’m _worth_ something—”

“You’re worth something to me,” John says, sitting back down and folding his hands in his lap. Alex can get prickly when he’s unsure of himself—doesn’t always respond well to gestures that are meant to be comforting. John grins ruefully. “Fuck, Alex, you wanna talk crisis…” He gestures helplessly at his own head. “You’ve done so much, in so many ways, you just—”

“I’ve filled out a lot of forms,” Alex says bluntly.

“Don’t—don’t _do_ that, Alex, you can’t possibly think that—” John takes a deep breath, and the line pops into his head, the perfect way to twist it, to turn this into a real fight: _do you really value my health and happiness so little?_ He knows that’s not what Alex is trying to say. He’s trying to say that anybody with a pen and a pulse could have done his job, that it’s not unique or special like… like Michelangelo's David, or a Maria Cosway tattoo.

He yanks his shirt off so fast he’s pretty sure he hears seams popping. Definitely his shoulder feels it. When his head emerges Alex is looking at him in blank consternation.

“Um… John?”

“You did this,” John says. He reaches out and takes Alex’s hand and holds it against the words, still raw and pink and stinging, inches from the scar of the wound that could have killed him, and Alex meets his eyes with something like wonder. John clears his throat. “She sided with you, by the way. No _ipsum_.”

“Of course she sided with me,” Alex says. “I mean. Uh.”

John charges forward. “I mean, part of me still thinks it makes more sense with it in.”

 _Dulce et decōrum est prō concīvibus ipsum sacrificāre_ : it is sweet and proper to sacrifice _yourself_ for your fellow citizens. John had argued that without the _ipsum_ , you lost the object of the sentence, and along with it the clear delineation of what was sweet and proper to be sacrificed.

But that was the point, Alex had argued. That you answered that question every day. That the sacrifice, if you made it, was a free choice: not a compulsion, not an obligation, but a gift.

John had long since given up thinking of himself as a gift. But Alex’s words had found some perch in his heart, however fragile, and now they’ve been shaped into black ink on his skin. He still doesn’t know what he can give the world, if he doesn’t have to give everything, but… “I went with your version,” he says. “I don’t know how this… this way of thinking fits me. I’m not gonna lie, these words don’t have quite the same ring to them as the original to me yet.   But I _know_ I have a better chance because you’re here. Without you... I don’t even know if I’d be trying.”

Alex’s eyes are huge. He leans closer to John, his hand on the tattoo creeping up to cup his cheek. John closes his eyes and lets Alex’s hand guide him forward into a kiss. It starts tender and careful, and Alex escalates with deliberation, building moment by moment. It’s almost unfair, how Alex can be so brilliant and also a goddamn kissing prodigy, how he can express so much and conjure up so much feeling in John with just the pressure of his lips. John’s heart flutters, too-warm, breath coming deeper. It’s heady. It’s heavenly. Some days his self-doubt gets the better of him, and he can hardly believe that he and Alex are together, that Alex actually thinks he's pretty great. But when Alex kisses him, in spite of all his doubts, John believes that Alex means all those kind words.

When Alex at last pulls back half an inch and presses their foreheads together, they both sigh as one, breath mingling. John’s content to just stand there like that, feeling thoroughly adored—not that he would mind another kiss, like, at all.

Suddenly, Alex starts giggling.

“What’s that?” John asks, opening his eyes.

“I forgot—I forgot about the tattoo for a sec there,” Alex snorts, “So just now, I was like— _why’s he ripping his shirt off_?”

“To distract you with my washboard abs, obviously,” John grins. He decidedly does not have washboard abs, especially not since a bullet dramatically reconfigured his exercise routine. This morning he tried to run a mile, with the vague idea that he might attempt a 5k soon, and found it way more tiring than it had any right to be. “I admit, I’m not as jacked as David, but I think I do pretty okay considering.”

“You do just fine,” Alex says, standing up to peck him on the nose, and John grabs him and folds him onto his lap. Alex makes a noise and hugs back, ducking his head to snuggle up against his chest. After a moment, he murmurs, “Thanks for—thanks for…trying.” His fingers trace gently over the tattoo, and John shivers. “I’m glad we talked.”

“Me too,” John says fervently. “I’m really sorry about the whole genius thing, I should have known that word’s a lot to live up to. And you’d said something before.”

“ ‘sokay.”

“Would you rather I just said you were really, really smart and work your ass off all the time? Only until you sculpt your David, of course. And then I _will_ call you genius.”

“... acceptable,” Alex says, settling against him. “God, I could stay like this all night.”

“I wouldn’t object,” John says, nuzzling against his neck.

Alex groans. “Don’t say that, I have—”

“... reading to do?” John finishes sadly, because there is always reading to do. “Gotcha.”

They stay still for another long moment before Alex groans again and pulls away. “Come get me,” he says. “Eleven thirty. Midnight, at the latest.”

“Oh,” John grins, “I will.”

***

It’s actually a little bit after midnight, but John had looked in before, seen Alex scribbling furiously in the margins of his anthology, and decided to give him a little more time to get his ideas down. Now Alex is flopped on his side in his little twin bed, the anthology propped up on the pillows like they’re a lectern. John peers down at him in concern.

“What’s up?” Alex murmurs.

“Just checking to see if your eyeballs are sideways,” John says. “How can you _read_ like that?”

“Sick kid. Big books. It just happened.”

John pulls back the comforter—Alex always sleeps with a comforter, the dude’s nuts—and slides in behind Alex. The bed creaks ominously.

“This bedframe is literally held together with duct tape,” Alex points out, “so, as improbable as this sentence may sound, John, I really hope you’re not planning on fucking anyone in here tonight.”

“Nah,” John says. He props himself up on one elbow and reaches over Alex with his healing arm, wincing a little as the skin of his fresh tattoo stretches. His fingers don’t seem to want to grip it tightly enough to pick up, so he sits up a little more fully and uses his other hand, taking the book and resting it in the dip of Alex’s side.  “Where are you at?”

“Top of the second column.”

He settles back to the bed, clears his throat, and reads, “ ‘Appellee does not challenge Tennessee's power to restrict the vote to _bona fide_ Tennessee residents. Nor has Tennessee ever disputed that appellee was a _bona fide_ resident of the State and county when he attempted to register.’ Oh, joy, a footnote. Okay, here we go: ‘Noting the lack of dispute on this point, the court below specifically found that Blumstein had no intention of leaving Nashville, and was a _bona fide_ resident of Tennessee.’ There’s your footnote. Moving on. ‘But Tennessee insists that, in addition to being a resident, a would-be voter must have been a resident for a year in the State and three months in the county. It is this additional durational residence requirement that appellee challenges. Durational residence laws penalize those persons who—’ ”

Alex chuckles.

“What?”

“Peenalize. You said peenalize.”

“That’s how it’s pronounced.”

“It’s pronounced penalize. Like… like Pennsylvania.”

“Oh, surely not,” John says, drawling like a debutante and fluttering his eyelashes.

“John. In hockey, when a guy hits another guy with his stick, do they send him to the peenalty box?”

A truly spectacular image materializes in John’s head, and he bursts out laughing. Alex turns over to swat him, and John rolls to dodge… straight off the bed.

Lucky for him, it’s only about a foot drop, and he lands square on his back. The wind’s knocked out of him, nothing more, but Alex reacts like it’s a national emergency, springing out of bed in an instant and kneeling over him. He rests one hand firmly on John’s chest to keep him from sitting up. "Are you okay? Your arm, is it okay?"

"Fine, I'm fine, it's all fine." To prove his point, John bats Alex's hand away with his bad arm and leaps to his feet. A few weeks ago a move like that would have left him dizzy, but today he handles it no problem. He ducks back down and retrieves the book from where it fell, open, on the floor, then clambers back into the bed. He pats the spot next to him impatiently. “Where were we?”

Alex, instead of walking around the bed to his side of it, makes a shooing motion. "Move over."`   

John looks at him incredulously. "What are you doing?"

"Something I should have done a long time ago," Alex says, with a look of steely determination. "Go on. Scootch."

There's no arguing with him when he's like this, so John complies, wriggling forward until he occupies the warm spot Alex left. He rolls over and watches as Alex carefully—though the bed creaks in protest nonetheless—lowers himself in, and then they're facing each other. But John can't sleep on his bad arm, so, reluctantly he returns to his other side, turning his back on Alex in the process.

An arm snakes around his waist.

"Ah," he says, comprehension dawning, "so this was all a nefarious plot to make _me_ the little spoon."

The pressure of Alex’s lips as he drags kisses up the back of his neck is reply enough. "You like it, then?" Alex murmurs.

"It's nice enough," John says. He clears his throat and returns to the book. “It is this additional durational residence requirement that—mmf—that appellee challenges—”

Alex’s warm hands have found his back, kneading out the tension just where John always carries it. The first couple minutes hurt, but then he gets a knot John didn't even realize he had and John half- melts to the bed in a creak of springs. He keeps reading the entire time, though; he knows Alex is trying to wind down for the night, but now that he’s been interrupted reading this case—by falling off the bed like an assclown, but still—he has the stubborn desire to finish it.

Alex, just as stubborn in his own way, doesn’t _ask_ him to stop, but he does gently roll John fully onto his stomach, momentarily blocking his view of the book. John twists his head to one side, laying the left-facing page of the book under his face and holding the right-facing page up so he can _almost_ keep reading it. Having to go cross-eyed takes a pretty severe toll on his reading speed and comprehension, but he perseveres. Then Alex straddles his back to get better leverage on his trapezius, and between the deep pressure of the massage and Alex’s fingernails on the new tattoo, John’s voice starts warbling dangerously, half-sentences started, bit off, restarted. The pressure is one thing, but the tattoo is another—it stings like a motherfucker, but he also doesn’t want to draw Alex’s attention to that fact, afraid that he’ll want to stop, and it feels way too good to stop. So, his words are riddled with more inarticulate groans and gasps than the Supreme Court probably envisioned, when they authored this scintillating opinion on Tennessee voter registration laws.

He can’t pinpoint the exact moment when he breaks off, and lets his mind go, and drifts away into the heat of Alex’s skin on his, of the kisses aligned down his spine. The next fixed point is long moments later.

“John,” Alex says, gently tugging the book out from under his face, “I’d appreciate it if you stopped drooling on my textbook.” He sounds smug.

John’s face flops directly into the pillow. “...mthrfker.” He shifts slightly, rolling back on his side, and a moment later Alex rejoins him, wrapping one arm over to absently tease his ribs, nuzzling the well-kissed back of his neck. John captures Alex's hand and clasps it across his stomach. His heart gives a stupid happy lurch with every puff of breath against his skin. _See?_ he tells himself, thinking of the words black and indelible on his shoulder. _It’s okay to keep something for yourself sometimes_.

“Do you like being the little spoon now?” Alex purrs, and John rallies.

“I’ve… uh… there have been some very persuasive arguments presented tonight…some by Thurgood Marshall, some by, well, you… and...”

Alex laughs, drawing him in closer. John hums in approval.

 _See?_ he tells himself. _It’s okay to let yourself be kept_.

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of bonus content/ DVD commentary on the phrase _dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_ and John's character development can be found [here](http://philly-osopher.tumblr.com/post/155355094184/dulce-dvd-extras).
> 
>  


End file.
